What I recently learned from my 5 year old son warmed my heart. While cleaning up some if his arts and crafts piled high on the dining room table I noticed it straight away. He had colored a typical page from a standard coloring book in the typical manner that any 5 year boy would. He tried his best to stay in the lines. The trees were green and brown and the sun was yellow. But it was what he did with the people in the picture that caught my attention. They were all different skin colors.
He knows that our world is a multi-colored one and he instinctively reflected that in his coloring. It was so inspiring to me and reflects a sense real hope for peace and unity for all mankind that I believe grows stronger with each new generation. This poem reflects what my 5 year old son taught me as he begins to travel down the path of his own life, picking up values that I hope will remain with him throughout his journey.
Colorburst
Kaleidoscope colors penetrating the senses
Sparkling with cooperative collaboration
Xenophobic thoughts utterly defenseless
Color is only illusion
Just ask the blind man
For him there is no confusion
Hand in hand children at play
Black, white, brown, red or yellow
Makes no difference in the game today
Color spawned from mere pigment
No bearing on illustrative imagination
That it matters at all a mere figment
Girls and boys building castles and forts
Pretending to be kings and queens
Smiling and laughing seeking villains to thwart
While adults harm one and other
How can ideals once taken for granted
Be forgotten by sister and brother
Children indeed have lessons to teach
Instinctively ignorant of that which is fictional
A fiction purporting that color should matter to each
The world is a kaleidoscope
Colorbursts are everywhere creating beauty profound
May the delightful ignorance of a child inspire hope
Free in Thought, 2016
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Also my other 2 submissions to the Steem Poetry Slam Challenge #1 (#steempoetryslam) can be found here: